Superiority Overdose

With the coming of guitarist Dirk the musicallity and ingenuity of Agathocles has decreased. He's not bad but he never tries to do that bit extra, to write that "slightly different" riff nor do anything that grabs the attention. On "Superiority Overdose" he simply sounds like an employee doing his work. You get the idea? Maybe it wasn't his fault. Maybe the whole band just didn't where to go next. To be honest, I wasn't even surprised when drummer Burt, who had been with Agathocles for 12 years, left after this album.

Previously each album had its own character. For instance "Theatrical..." was death metal orienated, "To Serve" was a pure hardcore punk and D-beat album, "Humarrogance" was an experimental blend of grindcore and death metal and "Thanks.." mixed grindcore with hardcore.

On "Superiority Overdose" the band seems lost, goes back to the late eighties a lot and tries to blend some styles within songs. There are a lot of old school grinders to be found like "Raw War", "Autonomy Melts", "Smash to Nothingness", "Chop Off Their Genitals", "Autumness", "Useless Judgement", "Alexandra's End " and by far the best grindcore song here, "Bureaucracy Versus Efficiency". But it seems the album has a lot of these retro songs. Too much really.

There are several song on which the band blends grindcore with hardcore. "Saturday-Night Swindle", "Superiority Overdose", "Proud to Be Out" and "Save Your Soul" are good enjoyable songs. However they sometimes also fail. "Directed by the U.S.", "At Random", "Save Your Soul" and "Made of Babies" are simply fillers.

There are a few times the band tries something else and succeeds. "You Bet" refers to early Master/Paul Speckmann and is quite an enjoyable death metal song. The idea behind the 16 minute song "Pale" is good. 16 minutes of doom ranging from some Godflesh inspired sections to a Paradise Lost influenced guitar melody. But to be honest I won't be playing it much. It was fun only once and the song in a way feels like a joke.

"Take a Piss" is a good hardcore punk tune with decent changes in pace but "Hand in Hand", "The Aim Is the Same" and "One-Way-Dead-End-Street" are way too long. Another annoyingly dull moment is "Zero-Tolerance". The song has a few grindcore explosions but mostly consists of doom metal with some samples over it.

No, "Superiority Overdose" is more than a few steps back and quite disappointing because of the inconsistent quality of the material. Briliant songs are combined with unspired ones and failed experiments. What a mess.